


Had To Be You

by ProblemWithTrouble



Series: Inception Fics [2]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, Pining, Protective Eames
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-05
Updated: 2018-01-05
Packaged: 2019-02-28 14:41:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13273620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProblemWithTrouble/pseuds/ProblemWithTrouble
Summary: Eames rescues Arthur from a job gone wrong and Arthur is bad at saying thank you.





	Had To Be You

“Why did it have to be you?” The words were mumbled and slurred from the blood that was leaking out of Arthur’s mouth but they still made Eames roll his eyes. 

“Beggars can’t be choosers, darling,” Eames mumbled, barely even registering the words as he took inventory of Arthur’s injuries and the whole damned situation. 

He had broken into the wine cellar where Arthur was being kept with only a half formed idea of untying him and shooting their way out. As it turned out that wasn’t an option.

Yes, Arthur was in fact tied to a steal chair that was bolted to the floor where Eames had thought he would be. However he was also naked and covered in bruises, with a protruding left rib, a very swollen right ankle, and cuts covering his chest. When Eames went around to the back to untie him he also found that his right hand was smashed and unmoving even when he started to work at the rope. “Can you shoot left handed?” 

Arthur made an irritated noise in the back of his throat as the ropes came loose. “Of course.” He tried to stand only to hiss when the weight hit his ankle and had to grab the chair to stay upright. 

Eames pulled his gun from his waistband and handed it over then shed his black jacket and handed that over too. Arthur checked the gun, pulled on the jacket, then checked the gun again while Eames grabbed his back up from his ankle. With a surprising amount of willingness Arthur slung his arm over Eames’s shoulder and let him support some of his weight as they climbed up the stairs out of the cellar.

Eames had already disposed of the guard who had been in front of the cellar door and they stepped over him to slip back into the kitchen without notice. The hard part was getting back to the stolen car Eames had taken there in the first place. Six inches of snow reflected all the lights of the house and lit the backyard and path to the car like it was the middle of the day. There was also still the problem of Arthur limping mostly naked through six inches of snow. 

There was a yell behind them and either one of the guards had made an early start on his rounds or they were making worse time than Eames had though. Arthur fired a shot, hitting the guard but by then they were already well and truly fucked.

Eames didn’t think he had ever appreciated Arthur’s uncanny ability to land any shot as much as he did when he picked Arthur up chest to chest and ran with Arthur’s legs wrapped around his waist and he continued to land every shot. 

He dumped Arthur into the back seat of the car and took off driving as Arthur hung out the open door and continued to exchange fire. Two of the henchman’s cars started but it didn’t take long for them to figure out that Eames had slashed their tires before he had stolen Arthur back. He’d have to remind Arthur of that next time he was accused of not planning well enough. It hardly mattered that he had done it mostly out of spite.

The gunfire stopped for a long while, but was still ringing in his ears a bit before the back door slammed shut again and Arthur hissed quietly. In the rearview mirror Eames could see him trying to lay himself down on the seat with a clenched jaw. “There’s pills in the kit and a blanket on the floor,” he said, reaching behind his seat and pulling the shock blanket in an attempt to throw it over Arthur. It landed on one leg long enough for Arthur to snatch it. He kept his eyes firmly forward and tried to remind himself that Arthur might not fight a lingering gaze right then it wouldn’t stop him from ruining Eames with two words later. Instead he turned up the heat and pointed every vent he could reach into the back seat.

Arthur didn’t say anything but Eames could hear the box opening and the shaking of pills and then an exasperated sigh. 

“Give it,” Eames said, reaching back again.

“It’s fine,” Arthur said and there was the rustling of the blanket.

“I’m sure. Hand it over anyway. Adrenaline can only last so long and it’s another three hours until we get where we’re going.”

“And where’s that?” The pout was evident in his voice as the pill bottle was put into Eames’s hand with more force than was really necessary. 

“A friend’s. You need a doctor.” He handed the now open bottle back and listened to Arthur’s throat click.

“A doctor won’t have a new ID for me,” Arthur said. Leave it to him to ask for something by arguing. Maybe Arthur was right, he needed better taste.

“Then you’ll have to stick with me a little longer. I’ve got a place a few hours away. You got kidnapped in just the right spot, darling.” Eames was careful not to say that at that particular safe house he already had one made for Arthur. He had one in each of his safe houses around the world. It was too much to explain that while they had been working the Fischer job - when they had been working on the impossible – Eames had been nervous. The kind of nervous that was only settled by forging IDs and making cover lives. He made one for Yusef, three for Ariadne, seven for himself, and nine for Arthur. 

He never examined why Arthur got nine and he only got seven, it was much easier to jet around the world and hide the identities together, one Arthur one Eames behind the walls of his safe houses. 

“How far is it from the nearest airport?”

“Close enough.”

Arthur let it drop; it only made Eames worry more.

* * *

Two and a half hours later Eames pulled into a suburban neighborhood with street after street of identical houses. He stopped in front of a house in the middle of the street with a silver minivan parked out front. He had to help pull Arthur out of the back seat and limp up the driveway to be met by a woman coming out of the backyard fence with her hair pulled up and a Johns Hopkins sweatshirt. 

She didn’t speak as she pulled them into a detached shed in the back which looked like a cross between a chemistry lab and an operating room inside. A space heater was already running and Eames laid Arthur on the table.

“I’m fine.”

“You sure look it,” she said. “Eames, I thought we agreed I wasn’t going to need to do more stitching for you.”

“You said no more stab wounds. He wasn’t stabbed.” Eames gave her a bright smile. 

“It’s still a knife wound. Do I get a name?”

Arthur sat on the end of the table with Eames’s jacket draped over his waist and just blinked at her. 

She sighed and got to work. 

Eames tried not to think while he waited for Sara to finish her work but Arthur wouldn’t look away from him. He just kept watching Eames’s every move with his favorite frown, the one where he was trying to work out a problem. Eames didn’t want to know what problem it was that he was working on; it never worked out well for him. 

Eames often and loudly accused Arthur of having no imagination, but the only people who believed it didn’t know Arthur. Mal had known it was a lie and since Mal knew Dom knew, not that he understood or appreciated it. A pointman without imagination couldn’t do things that Arthur could, and Eames would be a dead man more times than he cared to count without Arthur’s ability to see facts behind facts and see every possibility. 

A lack of imagination had never been Arthur’s problem it was that he couldn’t let things be. Great advantage on a job, not the kind of focus you wanted pointed at you when you were already too far gone on someone who didn’t want you. 

So he couldn’t look away when Arthur watched him, if he did he might slip and next thing he knew Arthur would have figured Eames out and it was only one small step from that to refusing to work with him ever again. And that was as good as never seeing someone again in Dreamshare.

Four hours of complete silence later Sara was wrapping Arthur’s ankle when she spoke again. “I’d give you instructions for how to take care of yourself, but if you’re anything like Eames here you’d just ignore them. “ She had wrapped his ribs, stitched up the deeper slashes, and did her best to check for head trauma. “Stay here, I’m going to go find you some clothes. You look to be about my husband’s size.” She left the room without saying anything more and shut it tightly behind her. 

The drugs were wearing off but there was still a glassy look to Arthur’s eye that Eames didn’t like. He needed a totem. 

“Cobb or Ariadne?” Eames asked.

“What?”

“I can drive you.”

“It’s fine.”

“They took your totem. I don’t fancy letting you travel without a totem. You’re paranoid enough when you do have it.”

“I’ll be fine.”

Eames shrugged but didn’t look away, just waited for Arthur to continue. 

“Anyone could forge Dom or Ari,” Arthur grumbled, half under his breath. 

Eames was quiet long enough to wonder how long it took Sara to find spare clothes. “Do you remember our first job? In Macau?”

“Of course.”

“You remember the chips?”

Arthur nodded.

“Left pocket of that jacket.”

Arthur took his good hand and dug around in the pocket until he grasped it, his eyes went wide when he found it even though he must have know what Eames was telling him. He also looked a little angry. “Eames, you…”

The door opened again and Sara came in holding a hoodie, sweats, and a pair of shoes. “Hopefully these will get you by until you can get some real clothes. Eames, a word.”

Eames stood and followed her out while Arthur changed. He pulled the folded bills out of his pocket and handed them to her. 

“That’s Arthur isn’t it?” 

“Sorry to disappoint-”

“Don’t bullshit me, Eames. If I just did Arthur a favor I want to know about it.”

“I paid you. It’s not a favor,” Eames shot back. 

“There’s a hit out on him. Johanna already called me.” 

Eames’s good humor had left him, not that there was a lot left after pulling Arthur beaten and bloody out of a cellar. He had known there would be a hit coming but they were faster than he had expected if Johanna already knew. He stayed quiet and waited for Sara to make her move. 

“A favor from Arthur in the bank goes a long way.”

Eames nodded as the door opened and Arthur came limping out. He still had Eames’s jacket on over the hoodie and his left hand was buried deep in his left pocket. A vicious mixture of possessiveness and pride ran through him at the sight. 

“Thanks, Doctor,” Arthur said with a sharp nod in her direction. 

“Sure thing.” She walked them out to the car and when Arthur was sat in the passenger seat Eames turned back to her. 

His voice was low and fast as he stared at her, face blank. “It’s a favor for now, but the next time you threaten Arthur, I might just tell him and we know how that ends.” He opened the driver door and his voice became light and he smiled. “See you around.”

She glared at their car the whole way down the street.

The air buzzed around them like Arthur was on the verge of speaking the two-hour drive to Eames’s safe house, but neither ever broke the silence. 

He had bought the property on a bet while drunk and playing a millionaire in a good old fashioned long con. Since then the 50 acres in the middle of Colorado had been sold to 3 different versions of himself even though Eames considered it only habitable in the summer. Eames was in the middle of disabling the trip wire when Arthur finally spoke from his perch on the hood of the car.

“You’re more paranoid than me,” he said and if Eames didn’t know better he would have thought Arthur made an honest to God joke. 

“I have more enemies than you, darling.”

“You should get that fixed,” Arthur said, eyes sweeping the parameter again.

“Are you offering?” Eames knelt in front of the side door and picked the lock. On a normal day, or even a normal escape Eames might have enjoyed working the lock open. Today he just wanted to get the door open so he could get Arthur inside and they could both sleep. Instead his fingers were numb and slow and it took twice and long as it should have to get the door open. 

Arthur’s feet crunched snow under them as Eames shouldered the door open. Inside was musty and the air was stale. It had been a year since he had hidden the IDs in the back of the unplugged fridge and Eames hadn’t been back since. 

“There should be a bed in the back room,” he said, pointing to the door. 

Arthur nodded and went but Eames had known him long enough to spot his I’m-about-to-fuck-shit-up face from a mile away. Eames braced himself for Arthur’s world-renowned brand of bullshit.

As silently as possible he slid the fridge out, removed the back panel then fished out the parcel that held two driver’s licenses, two passports, and a few thousand dollars in mixed currency. Then he went to sleep on the dusty couch with his arms tight around it. 

He woke to Arthur pulling the package out of his arm. He forced himself to keep his breathing slow and keep his eyes shut while Arthur slipped out the door. Eames let him get to the car door before he pressed the panic button on the key fob. 

The sun had come up and the sky was red and purple over them, the snow white below them it might have been pretty if he weren’t so livid and hurt. He turned off the car alarm and Arthur spoke. “I need to get to the airport.”

“That can’t wait until we’ve slept a few hours? You’d rather strand me in the middle of no where?” His patience had run thin during the drive and snapped when Arthur tried to ditch him in the middle of nowhere. Ice and snow crunched as he stepped out.

Arthur’s hand twitched.

“Or are you going to shoot me?”

“You have a snow mobile in the shed.” He didn’t even look ashamed, not that he ever did. 

“Christ, Arthur,” Eames cursed. This was why Eames didn’t help people. “Get in the car. I’ll take you to the bloody airport.”

Eames tried not to seethe openly the entire way to the airport as he repeated what had happened. He had laid the trap for Arthur, put the escape out for the taking and Eames wasn’t Dom or Ari or Mal, which meant he didn’t rate staying. He needed to stop expecting anything different.

When he dropped Arthur off he promised himself space. It was the same rule of space he had given himself before Dom had shown up in Mombasa. No more jobs with Arthur.

As it turned out he needed to work on his rule writing.

* * *

Arthur was in the back booth of a dim lit hotel bar and was not so subtly watching Eames make his way to them. Ariadne sat across from him and Eames squeezed himself up next to Arthur until they were pressed knee to shoulder. 

Arthur shot him a glare but didn’t say anything as Eames tried to remember how to breathe. 

“To what do we owe the pleasure, Eames?” she asked, pointedly looking at how close they were in the large booth.

“Came to talk to Arthur about a billing problem on the last job.” He took a drink from his beer to sneak a look at Arthur. He was rolling his eyes and it made Eames smile just a little.

“You couldn’t have emailed me this?”

“You never answer my emails, darling,” Eames pouted.

“That’s because all you do is send me pictures of unlikely animal friendships.”

“That cheetah and puppy you sent me was from Eames? That makes so much sense.” Ariadne laughed. “Anyway, I’ll let you talk to the _billing_ department. Arthur doesn’t strike me as the kind who like an audience.” She winked and Arthur looked murderous. 

Ariadne was well gone before Eames spoke. “Why did I get paid for the Thomas job?”

Arthur didn’t answer for a long time and Eames was sure he wasn’t going to at all when he finally said, “You came back.”

Eames let himself laugh, bitter as it was. “I always come back for you.”

“I know. It was a thank you.”

“Not trying to strand me would have been a good thank you,” Eames said with an easy smile.

“As much as I might want to I wouldn’t strand you.” Arthur paused to work over the next words before he spoke. “I needed to get to Minnesota.”

“What job was in Minnesota?”

“Not a job. A totem.”

Eames didn’t know what to say to that. _I could have driven you to Minnesota_ was out of the question but so was _You shouldn’t have let me slow you down. Your mind is more important than my life._ He meant both too much and that could only get him in trouble. Instead he decided he liked his beer quite a lot and it needed his utmost attention.

The silence was broken when Arthur looked at Eames and said, “You got a new totem, right?” in a voice that might have been concerned.

He could feel his poker chip against the thigh that wasn’t pressed against Arthur. He had meant to get a new one but every time he looked around for one he realized that it wasn’t quite right. “What kind of amateur do you take me for?” 

Arthur frowned at him. “The over confident kind.”

Eames laughed. “It’s not over confidence if you have the skill to back it up.”

Arthur rolled his eyes, scoffed, and then drained his drink. He shifted in his seat in a silent request to be let out of the booth. Eames didn’t move. “’Why did it have to be you?’”

“What?” 

“That’s what you said when I came to get you. Who else were you expecting? It’s always me.”

“Mr. Eames, let me out of the booth,” Arthur said instead of answering.

He didn’t allow himself to grin outwardly but Arthur could see it anyway. “Answer the question and I will.”

“How much to make it a no questions asked job?”

“It’s not a hard question.”

“Don’t make me climb over this table in public.”

“I’m not making you do anything.”

The words came out of Arthur like pulled teeth. “I thought someone was forging you. Turns out I was awake. Now move.”

“Why would they forge me?” Eames was genuinely baffled. 

Arthur’s rare anger flashed across his face. The last time Eames had seen Arthur get visibly angry with anyone who wasn’t Cobb they had been caught in a firefight and Eames had gotten hit in the arm and blood had splattered onto Arthur’s brand new shoes. “Move.”

“No.”

Arthur’s jaw clenched and his fingers went white where they were gripping his glass. “You know why.”

“I assure you I don’t know why anyone would think that you would trust me more than Cobb. It’s not like you’re in love with me.” Arthur looked away. “Christ, people think you’re in love with me?” Eames laughed. Maybe the laugh was a little too loud and a little too sharp and it might have startled the twisting pain in his chest away from his heart and into his throat. It choked him and made him want to run.

Lucky for him Arthur wanted him to run too. “Hilarious. Now move.”

This time Eames did.

“You should be proud. You’ve pulled quite the game on some of the world’s best con men. You barely even like me.” Eames couldn’t stop himself from talking. The words just came and he couldn’t hold them in. Maybe if he could make a joke out of it he would remember how to breathe again. Maybe if Arthur laughed it wouldn’t hurt so much, the love would fade. Like cauterizing a wound.

He expected one of the rare smiles Arthur saved for when they were in on a secret together. Instead the glare intensified. “It’s really not that funny, Mr. Eames.” He turned to leave but Eames followed. He knew he shouldn’t, he didn’t even really want to but the look on Arthur’s face was one that Eames had only caught glimpses of before and he didn’t know what it meant. 

He opened his mouth again but Arthur turned on him in the hotel lobby. This was a whole new face; one that on anyone else Eames might have thought was heartbroken. Arthur, though, wouldn’t be heartbroken over someone like Eames. 

“If you make one more joke about me being in love with you, feelings or no feelings, I will shoot you.”

Eames stopped short. “You’re serious.”

Arthur’s face twisted into a cruel sneer. “Don’t say that like you didn’t know.”

“But I didn’t know.”

“Of course you knew. You’ve been picking at me about it for years.”

Something light that felt suspiciously like happiness bubbled up and out of Eames in a laugh, a real one that was borderline a giggle. “I was actually flirting with you.” He stepped closer and kissed Arthur before either of them could ruin the moment. 

It was nothing like the million times he had imagined taking Arthur in his arms and kissing him. He had imagined himself kissing passionately and running his hands though glued back hair. He had imagined a chaste but firm kiss that laid all his cards on the table. He had imagined Arthur kissing back just as desperate or on less good nights he had imagined him pushing Eames away. What he hadn’t bothered to think about was Arthur doing nothing. 

He pulled back. “If you’d care to join me I was having our first kiss.”

Arthur sighed and fixed him with the look he gave extractors and architects after they had said something particularly stupid. “Is this a pity fuck because I was tortured or do you actually want a sexual reward for breaking me out now that you think you know I’m interested?”

“You can be quite thick when you want to be. Why did you think I always came back?”

“Because you like to think you’re a hero.”

“Not like you to be wrong about the obvious, darling. I come back because I love you.”

Arthur’s eyes went comically wide slowly until he actually started to smile. “Oh. Can we try at that first kiss again?”

“We can try all night.”


End file.
